Nov 2, 2024 | Pastor Jim's Blog
Today’s Word from Pastor Jim…
It was a warm humid August day in DeKalb, Illinois. It was the Summer of 1984, after three years of marriage and two years of seminary Felicia and I were headed out on the Oregon trail. Like the pioneers of old we headed west that day to begin a new life in an unknown land. The summer hit “What’s love got to do with it?” by Tina Turner was playing on the radio of my old Pontiac as I pulled into the parking lot of the hospital where I was born 25 years earlier. The Haish Hospital, named after its benefactor barbed wire baron Jacob Haish, had been converted now to an assisted living facility for the aged. We bounced up the seldom used stairwell to the second floor and were greeted at the door by my grandfather Harold Lindus.
My grandmother Aline Lindus had died on her birthday two years earlier. Grandpa Lindus was tired and worn, his lungs ravaged by emphysema, his oxygen tank always close, his hands unsteady. He had worked hard all his life: a sharecropper, a bus driver, a factory worker, and a man of profound faith. In his younger years, with the help of others, he was among the farmer founders of little Trinity Lutheran Church on 7th Street in DeKalb. Now his life and his world had contracted. Dinners out were rare, travel was out of the question, most of his life was spent in a small apartment, in the halls and gathering spots of the hospital where I was born.
We had a touching, tender, loving visit. My grandfather, like his grandson, was smitten with the young Jewish girl who shared my life. We talked about faith; he was troubled as he spent much time watching TV preachers and wondering why so many were cured and his prayers seemed unanswered. When it was time to go, we embraced, and he slipped a hundred-dollar bill into my hand; he wanted to pay for our gas as we journeyed out to Washington to begin our pastoral internship. The Pontiac, loaded up with clothes and wedding presents, headed across the prairies and mountains of this great land. With three hundred dollars in the bank and an $800 a month stipend we began a life of service in the church.
The fall was busy, learning names, visiting homes, playing games with the youth group, preaching once a month. I was also leading worship at Bethany Lutheran Church. Each Sunday I was expected to chant the liturgy. It was among the most terrifying ventures of my life. Fortunately for me, I was mentored by a Professor of Church Music at Seattle Pacific University. A young Vernon Wicker took me under his wing and with the patience of Job he loved me through my internship year. I was in my office at church on November 1st, All Saints Day, writing a sermon for Sunday when the phone rang. It was my mother; my grandfather Lindus had died. For all the Saints who from their labors rest. We flew home to DeKalb, gathered at church and graveside, and said goodbye.
On Sunday, October 20th Vernon Wicker died. Vernon and Jutta were long time members of Trinity Lutheran Church. Vernon will be laid to rest in the columbarium in close proximity to the niche that will have my name on it. Vernon’s beautiful voice has been silenced, his legacy will live on in his family and in my life. Tomorrow we will observe All Saints Sunday, there will be 28 candles on the baptismal font. The flames will flicker for the 28 from our community who have died since November 1st, 2023. It is a sobering day, a graphic reminder that life is short, and each day is a gift. I give thanks for my grandfather, for Vernon and for all the saints who from their labors rest.
One beggar, telling another beggar where to find bread, I am your,
Pastor Jim
If you would like to email Pastor Jim direct please send a note to: [email protected]
Nov 1, 2024 | Pastor Jim's Blog
Today’s Word from Pastor Jim…
Trinity Lutheran Church 2024—we are Blessed to be a blessing. We are blessed by God and in response to blessings too numerous to count we seek to give back.
We give thanks for the history of our Church and this Sunday we will give thanks for the dear Saints who have labored here in decades past. Thankful for the past, we take our turn and faithfully invest in the future of a church that touches lives and touches the world.
On this All Saints Day, November 1st, 2024 we celebrate the 71st Anniversary of the founding of Trinity Lutheran Church in Freeland. Trinity was born in the imaginations of our 37 Charter Members. 37 people, 21 adults and 16 children, believed in the future of this place before Trinity existed.
Our roots can be traced to our Mother Church—Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church in Clinton. In the Fall of 1952, the residents of Freeland longed for a place to take their children to Sunday School. Before Highway 525 was constructed it was a long drive to Clinton. Renting space from the Seventh Day Adventists in Freeland, the Sunday School outpost began to teach the local children the stories and songs of faith.
One year later, on November 1st, 1953, Trinity Lutheran Church became an official worshipping community of the American Lutheran Church. A handful of families with little money, no land and no building stepped out in faith. For the next 24 years Trinity would share a pastor with the people of Saint Peter’s. There were five pastors who served this two-point parish: ALS Mathre, Floyd Larsen, Richard Knutson, Ken Olson and Wayne Bolling.
In 1955, with a building budget of $10,000 and lots of sweat equity, the people of Trinity Lutheran Church began building a small church on property donated by Austin Marshall. One cinder block at a time – one Saturday work party after another—a series of small donations allowed the humble church to rise and serve. The years ahead would be challenging and difficult—money was hard to come by—Trinity would spend decades trying to walk on her own feet.
In 1976, Trinity and Saint Peter’s parted ways. Pastor Bill Beck and his family moved to Freeland to serve as our first full-time pastor. In 1989, Pastor Jim and Felicia Lindus arrived with their two daughters and doubled the size of the Sunday School. The total church budget was almost $50,000. That included: staff salaries, operational costs, and benevolences.
The 1990’s was a time of dramatic growth. Karl Olsen and Robin Edgeman joined our staff and the church took flight. There was a major remodel and expansion, the parking lot was paved for the first time, TLC purchased 13 acres of property from Matt Nichols and Erl Bangston, and Pastor Daniel Erlander was called to serve alongside of Pastor Jim in 1995.
In 1996 Trinity would build the Sanctuary where we worship each week and a fellowship hall that currently serves as our office area. For five years our Sunday School Students would walk each Sunday to our previous building for classes.
By the year 2000 our small campus has grown to 24 and a half acres. In 2001, construction was completed on this building. We had added a full-court gym, Sunday School Classrooms, a new nursery, the Fireside room, a courtyard with a columbarium and a commercial kitchen. It is worth noting that throughout all our building programs, we have never borrowed money outside the parish. Our debt peaked at 1.7 million dollars on September 9, 2001. We celebrated Rally Day in our new facility just two days before 9-11-2001. Then in 2020 we entered a pandemic season. We had to figure out how to be the church in a world that had changed dramatically.
All told we have spent more than $5 million dollars on property and buildings since 1991. Even more impressive, from 2014 to 2024 we have given $3.5 million dollars to charities far and near. Blessed to be a blessing – we are here because others served, dreamed, and sacrificed on our behalf. Blessed to be a Blessing we now take our place in the rich history of God’s movement at Trinity Lutheran Church.
Could those charter members have imagined how the seeds of their faith would take root and touch the lives of so many? If Pete and Alice, Nora and Harry and Don and Bonnie Cameron could see TLC today they would give thanks to the God of miracles. 71 years ago, 37 Charter members stepped out in faith—the times were hard and the future was uncertain—the Trinity Miracle was given life. Caring for the TLC miracle is our calling now. Thankful for the Past— Investing in the Future.
Happy 71st Anniversary Trinity Lutheran Church!
One beggar, telling another beggar where to find bread, I am your,
Pastor Jim
If you would like to email Pastor Jim direct please send a note to: [email protected]
Oct 26, 2024 | Pastor Jim's Blog
Today’s Word from Pastor Jim…
507 years ago, on October 31st, 1517, Martin Luther nailed the 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. He wished to spark debate among academics, he hoped that honest discussion might lead to honest reform. He had given his life to the Roman Catholic Church and had no intention of leaving it. It was dangerous to oppose it, and starting a new church denomination was seemingly impossible. Luther sought to reform the church he loved, to correct practices that were contrary to scripture, to leave superstition behind and to embrace a gospel of grace. The spark would ignite the Protestant Reformation and change the face of Christianity forever.
The 95 Theses were written in Latin. In 1517, the Bible used in Europe had been translated from Greek into Latin. In Germany, only 5% of the population could read the German language, the Bible in Latin was completely inaccessible to the common people. The only Bible known to the masses came from the lips of priests, the only Jesus they experienced was a vengeful fellow who was more likely to condemn them to fires of hell than he was to love them. The Roman Catholic Church used fear and superstition to control and oppress a poor uneducated population.
502 years ago, in September of 1522, a recently excommunicated Martin Luther would publish his translation of the New Testament. Since it was taught that salvation was impossible outside of the Roman Catholic Church, Luther had seemingly been condemned to hell already. Luther translated the New Testament from Greek into the German vernacular, the tongue and language of everyday people. The first edition of 3000 copies sold out quickly. Luther, with an assist from Johannes Gutenberg, had given the Bible back to the common people.
Tomorrow at Trinity Lutheran Church we will commemorate and celebrate the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. We will sing familiar Reformation hymns, we will raise our prayers to a good and gracious God, we will laugh and cry and encourage each other, and we will share the bread and wine of Holy Communion at a table where all are welcome. And we will read the Bible. What a gift to be able to read the Bible and muse upon the stories of scripture, taking good courage from the words and teachings of Jesus.
Like most of us, Martin Luther was a good but flawed person, he had great insights, he was brilliant, brave and productive. He was also complicated, sometimes broken, sometimes misguided, tainted by the prevailing racism and prejudices of his time. Luther is a giant in history, but Jesus is our role model and Savior. As Christians who happen to be Lutheran, we follow the Rabbi from the Galilee, not the 16th century Augustinian Monk.
We follow the one who ate with sinners, touched the unclean, offered a new beginning to every lost soul, and loved the broken hearted. We follow Jesus, a Jesus that might have remained largely misunderstood if weren’t for a man who took a stand for truth 507 years ago. “The truth will set us free.”
I will conclude by sharing two quotes from Martin Luther. The first is point number 82 of the 95 Theses:
“Why does not the pope empty purgatory for the sake of holy love and the dire need of the souls that are there if he redeems an infinite number of souls for the sake of miserable money with which to build a church? The former reasons would be most just; the latter is most trivial.”
The second is from the Heidelberg Disputation: “A theologian of glory calls good evil and evil good; a theologian of the cross calls a thing what it is.”
Blessed to be a blessing – you are the only Jesus many people will ever see.
Pastor Jim
If you would like to email Pastor Jim direct please send a note to: [email protected]
Oct 19, 2024 | Pastor Jim's Blog
Today’s Word from Pastor Jim…
Colonel James Anderson, have you heard of him? He is the man who laid the groundwork for a legacy that would touch every state in the Union and many countries throughout the world.
James Anderson was born in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania in 1785. During the War of 1812, he served under William Henry Harrison. Following the war, he became a businessman in the Pittsburgh area. Sometime in the 1850’s the Colonel decided to open his personal library of 400 volumes to the “working boys” of Allegheny, Pennsylvania.
One of those working boys was a 13-year-old Scottish immigrant by the name of Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie was employed as a messenger for the Eastern Telegraph Line making all of $2.50 a week. Andrew Carnegie and several of his friends were among those working boys who regularly checked out books from Anderson’s private library. This act of kindness by Colonel Anderson did not go unnoticed by the young Carnegie. In fact, it changed the perception of a poor young man with little exposure to literature. 57 years later Carnegie, in his autobiography, recalled the impact of Colonel Anderson’s charity saying, “In this way the windows were opened in the walls of my dungeon through which the light of knowledge streamed in.”
Colonel James Anderson would die in 1861 never knowing that his library would change the course of U.S. history. For at the time of his death that working boy, 26-year-old Andrew Carnegie, was on his way to being the richest man in the United States of America. In 1904, Andrew Carnegie dedicated a monument to Colonel James Anderson outside the Carnegie Free Library of Allegheny. The inscription reads as follows:
TO COLONEL JAMES ANDERSON – FOUNDER OF FREE LIBRARIES IN WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA / HE OPENED HIS LIBRARY TO “WORKING BOYS” AND UPON SATURDAY AFTERNOONS ACTED AS LIBRARIAN THUS DEDICATING NOT ONLY HIS BOOKS BUT HIMSELF TO THE NOBLE WORK- THIS MONUMENT IS ERECTED IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE BY ANDREW CARNEGIE ONE OF THE WORKING BOYS TO WHOM WERE THUS OPENED THE PRECIOUS TREASURES OF KNOWLEDGE AND IMAGINATION THROUGH WHICH YOUTH MAY ASCEND.
What better way to repay Colonel Anderson and what better way to pay it forward than to build public libraries. Carnegie did just that, between the years 1883 and 1929 there would be 2,811 Carnegie libraries constructed. Libraries endowed and paid for by the poor Scottish immigrant who arrived in Pittsburgh penniless at the age of 12 in 1848.
We too can leave a legacy. In fact, we have no choice but to leave a legacy of some kind. Our legacy is more likely to resemble Colonel Anderson’s. We are not going to build thousands of libraries. But by acts of kindness, generosity, and philanthropy, and by modeling the Christian faith we can to some degree pay back those who paved the way for our success. We can pay it forward to generations yet to come. We can touch the future by touching the lives of young people, by remembering the TLC endowment in our estate plans. Blessed to be a blessing! May the witness of ancestors inspire us to action.
Now you know the story of Colonel James Anderson.
One beggar, telling another beggar where to find the library, I am your,
Pastor Jim
If you would like to email Pastor Jim direct please send a note to: [email protected]
Oct 12, 2024 | Pastor Jim's Blog
Today’s Word from Pastor Jim…
Jesus said, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28
A week ago today, I was walking the streets of Istanbul, Turkey. It was a Saturday morning in a city that rarely sleeps. The streets were mostly empty. Felicia and I had traveled through Greece and Turkey with a group of 35 Trinity Lutheran Church pilgrims on a journey in the footsteps of the Apostle Paul. Some 30 years ago at the catacombs of Rome, a TLC group was accompanied by a small but jovial Catholic Priest who acted as our guide. He said, “I love sharing these sites with rich people.” We were taken aback. He then said, “How do I know that you are rich people? Cause poor people don’t take tours like this.” He was correct of course, he held up a mirror and, in our reflection, we could see our privileged position in the world. A world that does not look like Whidbey Island, a world that God so loved that he gave his only begotten son.
I was walking the streets of Istanbul on a Saturday morning, one of our pilgrims was looking for a souvenir Starbucks mug. It was then that I saw him coming my way. He was old, or at least weathered beyond his years. He was hunched over, heavily laden by life and the baskets that he balanced on achy shoulders. He would hawk his bread as he moved along, stopping every third of a block to catch his breath and rest his weary shoulders. I know nothing of his story, he did not speak English. I might have imagined that he was tired of work, that he would have liked to have stayed in bed like the rest of the city, that this labor was a burden. But I know no such thing. I simply saw this old Muslim man and thought of Jesus.
“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
Though we are privileged, rich, and in many ways blessed, we are still bent over and disfigured from the burdens that are uniquely ours and striking similar to those carried by our sisters and brothers of every land, race, and religion. We come each week to the sanctuary of TLC. We come to a safe place, to rest, to pray, to reflect on our place in God’s creation.
When you come to church tomorrow, I hope that you will hold the image of this old man in Istanbul in your heart. You see that old man will be sitting next to you. He may be disguised as an elderly woman dressed in fine apparel. He may be a teenager worried about climate change. He may have driven an expensive car to church consumed by an ominous medical diagnosis. The old man will be there, you can count on that. You may never know the full extent of his story, but he shares our humanity. He deserves our love and respect. He is a child of God, broken, beautiful, frail, insecure, putting one foot in front of the other, longing for rest, hungry for hope.
One privileged beggar, telling another where to find bread, I am your,
Pastor Jim
If you would like to email Pastor Jim direct please send a note to: [email protected]
Oct 4, 2024 | Pastor Jim's Blog
Today’s Word from Deacon Amy…
“Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.” Matthew 13:8
As I was walking through the courtyard on Wednesday afternoon, getting everything set up for youth group that evening, I spotted a lovely, delicate flower sprouting from a crack between the concrete sections. Some tenacious little seed had found the tiniest bit of soil in which to take root.
Often times in ministry, especially when working with children and youth, we say that we’re “sowing seeds.” With Matthew 13 in mind, our hope is that if we keep broadcasting seeds, some of them will take root and grow strong and healthy.
We don’t see the same number of youth or families participating in worship or Sunday School as there have been in past generations. The church, as a whole, has seen a decline in attendance over several decades now.
It’s easy to get discouraged. But we need to remember what Jesus told us about sowing seeds. Not all of them will grow… but some will.
My first years here, I would take 10-12 middle school kids to camp in Idaho. This summer, I took 6. It was a smaller group, but we had a great time. I often wonder, though, if these trips to camp do anything to build the faith of these kids, or if it’s just a fun experience for them?
A couple of weeks after our return this year, I received this text message from one of the students: “Thanks for showing me Luke 14:11. I like it a lot.”
While at camp, we were talking about how we can help to change the world, bringing it back to what God had intended. The theme for our second day at camp was Inclusion. This was one of our key verses for the day.
John 14:11 says, “For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
We discussed the idea that by intentionally including those who are often rejected, we can bring about the change that God longs for. By putting others before ourselves, we are paving the way for change.
Honestly, I didn’t know if this lesson sunk in at all while we were at camp. To hear from this student, weeks later, that they were still ruminating on that verse, and that our conversation had an impact on their life, was a wonderful reminder for me. A reminder that sometimes the seeds that we cast do take root.
Ministry is like that. We sow seeds. Some land in the rocks and don’t grow. Some land on the path and get quickly devoured by birds. But some seeds land in just the right spot and take root. Sometimes a little kernel of Biblical wisdom sinks in.
I recently sat with another student who was frustrated with the very vocal hypocrisy of some people who call themselves Christians. This student wanted to know why people would speak out against others, spouting judgment and exclusion, when Jesus clearly showed a love for everyone. Jesus taught us to include all people, to care for all people, and to love all people. Why, then, are some who claim to follow Christ so quick to spew negative messages about anyone? What about the love of Jesus?
Again, these were things that had been discussed in Confirmation classes several years ago. Yet, the messages stuck. This student heard the word of Jesus and it took root and sprouted in her heart.
We may not have the same numbers of people coming to church. Our classrooms and faith formation programs may not be as full or robust as they once were, but the seeds that we are sowing are still taking root.
I urge you to continue to sow seeds of faith in your own lives. All Christians are called to proclaim the Gospel message, the Good News of Christ. Sow the seeds, spread the love of Christ, share the message in all that you say and do.
With hope and love,
Deacon Amy
